February Sucks

I love the story this is like the 100th time I've read it the only thing about this story I don't like is the ending . I still believe without a doubt be sure to divorce her there should have been no question in his mind see you don't want to be yeah look in reality I have known three or four fathers who tried to stay because of their children and really in the end all I did was wind up making things worse and hurting the children so this b******* about staying for the children in reality in the real world it doesn't always work and it makes things worse. Once Linda broke that trust especially in the way she broke it I mean it wasn't like she snuck around or she just flat out left his ass and made it known that she was leaving with her the football player. It's on top of cheating she's humiliating them in front of everyone including their so-called friends there was no coming back from that so the rest of the story is just b******* it's a great story don't get me wrong well written but b******* he should have divorced her and I should have no question staying for the kids in reality that doesn't really help again sometimes it makes it worse.

Powerfully told. The emotions were intense and keenly felt in the writing. Had me up and pacing the room.

Somehow, though, "Now you know (how easy it is to be swept off your feet with no warning)" seems the wrong big "now you know" realization to resolve the story, because in real life people typically _aren't_ swept away like that.

By contrast the wife spent nearly the entire story getting-but-not-really-getting the magnitude of what she put her husband through. She still hadn't gotten it, clear up to that final date night, evidenced by wanting to wear the blue dress; anyone with an ounce of common sense would have burned the blue dress and all the accessories as an act of repudiation of the whole first incident. Wanting to make new memories using the costumes and props of the original disaster would if anything reify the original betrayal. What that moment suggested was that she _still_ needed to be taught the lesson of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that; failing that, she was never going to truly get it.

The husband didn't need a near miss himself to keep honoring his vows; indeed having already experienced the betrayal so deeply would put him off being pulled into that reaction. But it would have been quite plausible for him to pretend, at least as far as the front door of the restaurant, and wait behind the edge of the doors for his wife to emerge, stricken, in his wake. That would have been the "Now you know" moment -- coming from his lips, behind her -- that finally, truly enlightened her as to what she had done, and made her truly ready to recommit, in a way that all her prior lip service and bluster had failed. Up til then, her primary motivation was for things to blow over and get back to normal, as if normal was even possible. The amount of denial in that would have ultimately doomed their attempt.

Read this story for the second time in years. Still a classic. Not many of this caliber. None of the variants even come close. But the reconciliation still rubs me the wrong way. Why? Because the intimacy of a married couple requires implicit and unspoken trust that your partner 'has your back' without requiring thinking. It's a form of faith. But when a partner does something like this, it's an act of calculation. He or she considers alternatives and ultimately calculates sharing that intimacy, and in the act deeply violates it. Love and intimacy are both biological attraction and how you feel about it. So when one engages in such calculation about fidelity, that intimacy is no longer about unquestioned faith in that partner's support. Linda calculated her infidelity vs. her marital intimacy and found the latter lacking. Really that simple. And it's not something to blithely forgive in my estimation.

My wife of three years cheated on me when I was a 29 year old new PhD teaching in the 90s. Married her as a 22 year old undergrad sorority party girl, and I supported her through her remaining undergrad program. We shared so many interests and passions, and we had a two year-old with who I spent a lot of time while her mother attended classes. Then, when she became a grad, she had an affair with an older recognized Professor in her dept. That got back to me and I fully understood what the character Jim felt in this story. It was a calculated act on her part which I could not forgive. So we ended up divorcing after an unsuccessful reconciliation and I moved away to take a faculty position across the country, effectively abandoning the family. She married the Professor and then divorced two years later. Saw her several years later at a conference where she confessed intense regret for the cost of our marriage and our deep companionship. We do things we later regret when young and stupid, like a daughter I never really knew, and an ex-wife who bitterly regretted her dalliance. So this story resonates for me.

I enjoyed the story a lot. However, I traveled a lot for work and never cheated. I had plenty of opportunities. Once when my wife was overseas for a month on a military exercise a woman friend of ours asked me to live with her for a month. I turned her down.

I have never been overwhelmed or lost my ability to reason because of a good looking woman. I have turned all of my chances down because that was my choice.

I would have had a difficult time taking my wife back after such a deliberate public humiliation. Also our friends would not have remained my friends after they sided with my wife. And the woman, Dee who assisted my wife in her cheating would have received special attention from me & it wouldn't have been pleasant.

Unfortunately, I have known men & women who shared Dee's attitude and they were unpleasant & unhappy people. Those couples were always untrusting of their spouses & bragged about their sexual exploits.

I avoided those folks.

This story is very well written and I liked reading it a lot.

Thanks

This story is well written, enjoyable and frustrating. It's frustrating because if it was my wife when Dee told me what my wife did and her part in enabling her, I would have knocked her on her ass and whipped her husband too. My rage would have taken over and I probably would have ended up in jail. But once I was bailed out I would have studied that football player's habits and looked for weaknesses in his routine. Then one night I would have crippled him with a baseball bat.

As far as the wife goes I understand why he stayed for the kids because I did the same thing. It isn't pleasant and it's very hard. Because I am who I am my marriage has never been the same or as good as it was prior to the cheating. However, life goes on & you have to enjoy what you can.

Thanks for an enjoyable story.

I have read this several times. For me, there are several things Linda said about her time with mark, I don't know if I could get beyond. Her eventual remorse for what she did would have helped but I doubt I would have been there long enough for that to play out.

One place I disagree with Jim was when he said, " When push came to shove, I hadn't done much better at that than Linda had. "

He may have been led astray but he didn't take the time to calculate an escape and enlist others to help him.

Sorry, but no. Kids or no kids, what she did showed her to be a narcissistic bitch who did not have any respect for her husband. No way should he have taken her back.

Very good writing, much better than the angry attempts at mimicry.

According to Linda... "even the worst hurts heal with time." NO. THEY. DONT. 29 years on And 63 years old... The betrayals are as fresh in my mind today as they were then. Should have offed myself and ended the torment.

Honestly, the fact that Jim was ready to go with the escort tells me that both him and Linda are meant for each other. But the underlying premise behind it is wrong. The underlying premise is that, under the right circumstances everyone could be induced to cheat, by the right person. And that premise is, quite simply, false. It can only come from a person who doesn’t understand the true nature of willpower, who doesn’t understand what it is to always place principle before self-interest. There are people out there who, after one date, would not cheat on that person for the most desirable person in the world, because no matter how strong their desire or impulse their conviction will override it, they will dwell in a headspace that emotion cannot overcome. And they would do that for a person who, after that single date, they didn’t even care about yet, much less for someone they actually loved. Because, no matter how much they might want/desire or be attracted to someone in the moment, they know that a cheater is not who they want to be. To become a cheater would destroy their perception of themselves in a way they cannot stomach, and so in a way, refusing to succumb is the only option they can live with. That kind of rigidity is rare, and certainly not everyone possesses it, but it does exist. Thus it’s perfectly fine to say both Jim and Linda wish they could be that, but cannot live up to that lofty goal. To say “Both these characters are flawed, and must be willing to acknowledge that”, is not an issue. But to instead imply that *everyone* could be convinced to cheat under the right circumstances is, quite simply, wrong. It only demonstrates that anyone who believes that doesn’t know what it would be like to be someone who could never cheat, and that in order to feel less guilty about that fact they’d sooner just pretend that everyone else shares their flaw, so that they don’t have to acknowledge their own weakness as a weakness.

"She hadn't done it to be cruel, but it was. I'd never felt so alone. Then there was the promise. She promised me a special night, then she took it from me and gave it to Asshole. She promised she wouldn't ever cheat, and then she did. Maybe Lynn was right and everyone can cheat, but not everyone does."

To me, that was the deal-breaker. As Jim found out with the beautiful escort, anyone can be seduced IF they don't have their boundries. Linda chose to yield to her baser nature. This was compounded by dishonoring her spouse, disrespecting him, disregarding his pain, and offering herself to a whore of a man.

The husband caved and took this woman of weak character back, with a good chance it could happen again, as she herself admitted.

In spite of this, the author's story is the most moving and emotion-stirring one I've read over the past several months.

( Perhaps because I've experienced a similar tragedy, the pain of which I still deal with decades later.)

Keep up the good work, sir.

Even the terrible sequels are better than the original. Linda is a whore and everyone in his life sucks.

Read a ton of alternative endings and this is still the best

Characters are poorly developed, and the plot is disjointed and larded with tired or ridiculous plot devices. It has only spawned spinoffs because the central event in the story is a marital atrocity and the husband turns out to be an irresolute, weak , cunt of a man. 1

I really like the comments made by TrainerOfBimbos. I especially liked the comment about “serious character growth” as being critical to any sort of “reconciliation.”

No. Just no. BTB... and I would've started with that blue dress!

The scenario were Linda's infidelity occurred here was absolutely unforgivable, kids or no kids. That situation? Special Night out with friends and she leaves with another man and everyone there knew. Husband was humiliated and feels the heaviest of pain. Sorry, she doesn't love him. Any infidelity from a spouse and many partners can't forgive. The trust is gone forever and the marriage is over. I understand those that can manage to forgive and stay... esp w/ kids involved. But not a brutal situation like that. Bye Bitch!

I liked reading parts of this story but it mostly made me angry. I hate the wife and ended up strongly disliking evety character (except the 2 kids), So that's not a good story for me.

I don't believe I've ever read any of your stories up until now, but I'll say this. This story DOES have good bones. I can genuinely see why I've seen so many spin offs and alternate endings to it. You really did write something special in a way, but just tripped and got road rash on your face at the finish line. with that being said I want to state I'm not set on either side of Reconciliation or BTB, I usually form an opinion per story based on how badly the characters mess up, how much their characters progress, etc. I hate over the top BTB garbage where the husband is secretly a former navy seal delta force CIA Marine with mafia connections who destroys the wife and everyone and everything she has ever known and loved. Its so unrealistic and cringe. all the same I hate wimpy cuck Reconciliation stories where the Husband gets gaslit by his entire friend group and both sides of the family to just "get over it". All that to say I enjoy both if they're earned and done right. This is not one of those cases. As I said, the story is good at its core, However there are just too many glaring issues to ignore. First off I think it went a couple pages too long(or more likely the length was fine, but it was too repetitive) with everyone just repeating the same actions and lines of Dialogue over and over again. Also neither character really had any character growth. In fact Jim had major character regression at the end, Linda and the ENTIRE cast of characters(besides Jim and the children) are completely and utterly delusional. I genuinely don't understand how I'm supposed to be expected to believe that every single character in Jim's life is supportive of cheating. I also don't understand how at no point did Jim ever mention to Dave or whatever his name is that Dee admitted she'd do the same thing Linda did, especially once Dave started running his mouth and joining in on the Gaslighting. I'd definitely be telling him. Also The ending. Good lord the ending was horrible. I genuinely have never seen such a desperate hail mary attempt at Reconciliation. I saw another comment that said the Ellen part could've been done like her not being a Rat, and her story being genuine and Jim just walking her out to her car for safety or something. Then IMO coming back in and his wife crying not only feeling what he felt when she left with Marc, but knowing that he loved her enough that he would never cheat on her and came back for her, and THAT should've been her big realization. Also That old fuck LW needs a swift kick to his head for that underhanded manipulative bullshit. Literally every character in Jims life is a backstabbing manipulative insect. And he just goes along with it like a good little boy. Now, I've seen some bad writing in order to move a story a certain direction....But pulling out a literal(not really but might as well be) mythological creature that magically hypnotizes men to fall in love with them to seduce Jim is probably the most far fetched reach in order to justify a reconciliation I have ever seen lol. Cheating isn't in Jim's character as it is, let alone after he went through and all the pain he felt. That ending was actually such a lame cop out. It ruins Jim's entire character. Every single thing that Jim did, felt and said during the entire story is gone now. Every hurtful and condescending word and act of betrayal by the friends and the wife are entirely justified now and he's no better than her. In fact, Marc is a mythological creature too. He hypnotizes women and makes them magically fall in love with him. So now no one is at fault and you should move this story over to the fantasy section.

The issue with this story is basically that Linda's delusion goes on for far too long at the beginning and that at the end when it's "resolved", like a shitty magician, LW reveals the trick - which further just emasculates Jim. It's no wonder that the readers really hate Linda and often dislike Jim as well, nor is it a wonder that despite being such a well read story, it has a rather unremarkable rating.

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I'm going to state for the record that I don't have any problem with a reconciliation ending. Rather I look at the story and determine if the ending is justified by what I just read. For instance, I don't like BTB stories either when the revenge on the cheating spouse is gross or unjust or out of proportion to what they did. Likewise, I don't like this story very much because it doesn't feel like the reconciliation is earned and it doesn't feel like Linda has redeemed herself at all from the first pages of the story, rather that, it's more like the only hurdle she had to overcome was just admitting that what she did was wrong. That's kind of bollocks.

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If you're going to reconcile a cheater, then I feel like there needs to be some serious character growth involved. I didn't even see that an attempt was made in this story. For all we know, Linda is just exactly the same person she was that did such an outrageously hurtful thing to her spouse "in the moment" and while she may recognize that now, it still doesn't make us feel comfortable that she's still not capable of such public cruelty. In fact, rather, we suspect that she still is and because of this, we don't want her back with Jim because earnestly we are afraid for him. Linda isn't a safe partner - she's regretful, remorseful, but still not safe and she has done little to demonstrate to us the reader that she could ever be one.

You gotta love Riverstone for having the balls to stand up and tell us all what a crap lover he is.

Read more literotica or watch some porn and spend some time on that pussy Riverstone. Eventually even you will be rewarded with the satisfaction of bringing a woman to orgasm.